Beyond the Request for Training

Five Considerations for L&D Professionals Working Internally

It’s not too uncommon for the “Training Department” to be perceived as an order-taker: “I need X training, so our sales increase;” “Just create training on how do x.” Your internal customers want what they want and aren’t shy about asking for it directly. How do you handle that? How can you demonstrate greater value and the ability to solve real business problems?

As an L&D professional, you play a crucial role in helping employees enhance their skills and knowledge, ultimately leading to improved job performance and better outcomes for your organization.

Here are five considerations to keep in mind when you’re working with your internal customers.

1. Understand your customers’ needs. What skills or knowledge do they require to perform their jobs effectively? What challenges do they face in their roles? What are their performance objectives? Is training really the best solution? By conducting a needs assessment and gathering feedback, you ensure L&D is providing relevant and valuable training and the correct performance improvement interventions.
2. Develop a customer-centric mindset. This means putting customer needs first and designing custom learning programs tailored to their specific requirements…but not simply taking an order for a training program. You want to be collaborative (see tip #1), but you also want to do what’s best to ensure the learning interventions are effective and help improve performance.
3. Communicate effectively. Effective communication is key to ensuring your customers are  aware of all learning programs that are already available to them to improve their teams. Use a variety of communication channels, such as email, intranet, and social media, to promote your L&D department.
4. Provide ongoing support. This may include meeting with your customers to consult on the best approaches (i.e., formal or informal) to ensure their employees continue to develop their skills and knowledge over time.
5. Measure the impact: Finally, it’s important to measure the impact of the learning programs you’ve spent a lot of time creating. By collecting feedback and measuring the impact on job performance and business outcomes, you demonstrate L&D’s value by ensuring your customers have high-performing teams.

By taking a customer-centric approach, you can ensure your entire organization wins. And when you demonstrate the ability to do more than build content on demand, the perceived value of L&D ascends to new heights.